Three days of competitive Senior AA Tier 3 provincial baseball action ended Sunday with the Cabri River Rats taking the provincial title.
The River Rats beat the Unity Cardinals 3-1 to win the gold medal game at Beaver Lions Stadium in North Battleford. The win came just in the nick of time Sunday afternoon, before the rains poured down.
Six teams were involved in the tournament. The North Battleford Beavers, Unity Cardinals and Meadow Lake Sox represented the NSRBL, while the other teams were Cabri, the Rosetown Eagles and the Northeast Red Sox.
Round-robin play saw Unity finish on top with a 3-0 record, followed by Cabri and North Battleford at 2-1 and Northeast at 1-2. Not advancing to the playoff round were Meadow Lake at 1-2 and Rosetown at 0-3.
For North Battleford, it was a good showing, but in the end they simply could not find an answer in their games against the River Rats, the champions of the Sask-Alta league.
The Beavers beat Rosetown 8-7 in the opening game and the Northeast Red Sox 10-0 in the second game to secure their place in the medal round. But they lost 7-4 to Cabri Saturday night, and then fell in the semifinals by an 8-3 score. The other semifinal saw Unity beat Northeast by a 9-4 score.
North Battleford was not the only venue where North Saskatchewan River league teams were in provincial action this past weekend.
In Carnduff, the Standard Hill Lakers won the provincial title in Tier 4, defeating the Redvers A’s 7-2. The Lakers advanced to the finals by beating the Wilkie Brewers by a 9-6 score earlier that day in Redvers.
In Estevan, the NSRBL champion Border City Blue Jays wrapped up the Tier 2 title, winning 14-4 over the Carlyle Cardinals.
